Admittedly, it doesn't help when you have a president citing Gog and Magog as swell reasons to go to war. Countries like, oh, say, Israel, might be forgiven for being confused now, after eight years of ears open to Biblical reasoning to public policy, that the same arguments aren't working on the Obama administration.
So if you can't count on good old fashioned American biblical rhetoric, maybe you can count on good old fashioned American short-term memory! We're famous for it.

Today's Haaretz has the interior minister touring the E-1 corridor in Jerusalem and saying "he hoped Israel would succeed in convincing the U.S. to approve construction." The minister goes on to note that the "the new [U.S.] administration is different from the last," and that the Bush administration had "made clear comments" regarding its acceptance (italics, ours) of construction in that area.

Sigh. We are hoping that our upcoming episode of "Political Graffiti" will be our Last Story About Israel Ever, but then there are moments like these, when we have information. So in our Second to Last Story About Israel Ever:

In addition to the on-record testimony we have from former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice regarding the E-1 corridor--""We have told the Israelis in no uncertain terms that [settlement in the E1 area] would contravene American policy"--we have from a US source involved in the negotiations that "the issue Rice got the most incensed over was the development of the E-1 zone. The US said time and time again: you do not start E-1."

Now, whether or not Israel presses forward and starts construction is one thing. But the ruse that this was a project ever approved by any US administration (Elliot Abrams does not count as an "administration") is just that--another ruse.